property, small but free

So there’s a story about post-Soviet Russia, of a tourist looking over at some urban green space being landscaped and seeing about ten guys with weed-whackers, laboriously cutting the grass. He asks why it isn’t one man, pushing a gas lawnmower that barely costs more than one of the tools currently in use, getting the job done faster and cheaper. “Mumble mumble…EMPLOYMENT!” comes the answer. The men’s employer is paying ten paychecks instead of one, because it is somebody’s goal (probably a policy goal) to increase paychecks. In effect, the use of the wrong tool for the job is here a welfare program.

And here we are, right in the teeth of an apparent paradox that absolutely confounds an unfortunate number of people. Because “Unemployment,” is the most immediately observed economic evil, make-work measures of this kind that actually discard productivity, are regarded as helpful economic treatments. The Free Market…

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